Stevo - I was just about to post the same link

Get a card reader.

(How's about that for terse, George )

I've seen them for as little as £1.99 (try www.7dayshop.com if you're in the UK - £7 for a reads-all-reader and £4.50 for SD-only)

Matt

Have you connected the camera into a hub? If so, it sounds like you've overloaded the power requirements. (Each USB device can specify how much current it will take to the host computer. A hub can only dish out so much power, and as far as I remember, you get that message when it's max'd out!)

You could try connecting directly into the computer, or better still (as George so tersely put it) get a card reader which often saves a lot of hassle (and if you have USB2 and get a USB2 reader, will work a lot faster than the camera too!)

Matt

Carrying on the DIY theme that's been going on today...

Why not wrap the camera body in a modified freezer wine-cooler? That should do the trick

Matt

Interesting article here:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/luminous-heavens.shtml

They recommend taking many <5min shots and combining to create a 3 hour image! Says there's special software for this.
Think the astronomical term is a "stack".

Try these for software:
http://www.astrosurf.org/buil/us/iris/iris.htm - looks very feature rich
http://registax.astronomy.net/
http://www.astrosnap.com/

Hope that helps
Matt

Ken,
Try this:
* Take shot without NR
* Take second shot without NR
* ...take shot n without NR
* Take same length shot with the lens cap on.

You should be able to combine them in PS... can't remember the exact layer recipe... but you should be able to find it on the web

I reckon if you take several shorter images you will be better off than just a single long one Seem to remember (from somewhere) they do this for film astro-photography and stick all the layers together.

I'll have a look around in Google...
Matt

Here's the definitive answer

When you take a long exposure, the camera takes another image of the same duration and performs black-frame-subtraction. This greatly reduces the amount of noise visible in the image. The camera is taking a black image as a reference for the noise floor of the CCD (which varies according to temperature and conditions too!).

With the *ist-D you can turn this off - look in the custom menu, for the "Noise reduction" option (can't remember the exact term right now). But, if you disable noise reduction the noise level will shoot up for long exposures.

It's required because all semiconductor devices have inherent noise. As you increase the ISO sensitivity you are amplifying that background noise as well as genuine light levels. And when you use longer exposures, the noise also becomes much more significant.

The dark frame subtraction is generally carried out in astronomy. In fact, you can also try taking several images of shorter duration and stacking them together in PS (or the Gimp, or whatever ) Try doing a Google search for astronomical photography techniques

Hope that helps!
Matt

Anna - can you email a JPG to me? (May have to do the PEF as well later)
Matt

Anna: a few questions and points:
1. What RAW convertor are you using? Is it Pixmantec?
2. The output image should be 3008 x 2008 pixels (which isn't even 10x
3. You shouldn't need to do any resizing in Elements - just load the image straight in.
4. If you haven't enabled full colour management in Elements, then make sure you save as an sRGB image - JPG or TIFF from the RAW convertor.

Try this:
1. Convert in your RAW convertor to a high quality JPG in sRGB colour space
2. Load the image straight into Elements
3. Examine the image (i.e. do nothing to it)
4. Let us know what you get

Matt

Lena & Anna,
In addition to my "sticky note" about using Capture One, here are some general points about RAW conversion that may clear out some of the "mud":

* The RAW format contains a lot more information than the JPG, so you process as much as possible in the RAW convertor before going into PS.

* Get the White Balance right first of all. You can select a predefined WB: "Sun", "Shade", "Tungsten" etc, or pick a close one and manually adjust. Alternatively, if there's something you know is absolutely white (not teeth!) like material or paper, then you can eye-dropper to get a good white balance. (Personally I use either an accurate grey card from www.qpcard.com, or an Expodisc)

* Next, get the exposure right. Use the histogram display to fill the chart from dark to light (left to right). This maximises the tonal range. Also, set the "film type". Most RAW convertors have set of response curves built in to simulate various film types. It depends on your subject and what you want to obtain - but get this nearly right.

* If you made drastic changes, go back to the white balance and double check this, then check the exposure again. (They inter-relate somewhat)

* Now you can adjust contrast, saturation, and if you really want to - curves (assuming your RAW convertor has this). Don't go over the top, just go for a well defined exposure. Anything radical you can tackle in PS.

* Use the exposure warning mechanism to show whether you have any burnt out highlights or deep shadows. If the areas covered are important to the image, then re-evaluate the exposure and/or the film-response type, and possibly the curves adjustments (again keep curve adjustments slight!)

* Visit the noise reduction section. This generally depends on the ISO setting of the shot. The higher the ISO, the larger the noise reduction needs to be. If you've shot ISO200, then reduce the noise reduction to preserve detail. The values used depend on the RAW convertor, and experience

* Now, adjust the sharpening. Personally, I prefer to do this in PS as I have a lot more control over things.

* Finally, export the image. If you're new to RAW, export in the colour space "sRGB" and as a high quality JPG. That'll give you the best compatibility with other packages and print services. However, these are my personal views:
- For general work, export as AdobeRGB in JPG
- For super large work, or lots of editing in PS, export as ProPhoto colour space in 16-bit TIFF (the ProPhoto + 16-bit gives plenty of headroom for serious colour and curves manipulations)

* Additionally, don't forget that some images will have so much contrast between light and dark you just can't get a perfect histogram in one hit. If the whole image is important (e.g. landscapes), then you can always output two JPGs from the RAW convertor. e.g. adjust the RAW file for exposure in the shadows and output that, then readjust for the highlights and output again. Bring both images into PS as layers in the same image and blend the two layers with a layer mask

If you work methodically with the convertor, you should find that given some experience you can successfully adjust a shot in well under a minute. For shots in the same lighting conditions it becomes a breeze because you can copy the white balance, exposure, and other settings from one image to a whole batch of others.

Oh yes, and one final point - it does initially take time! Once you get over the learning curve it becomes easy and a real time saver So stick with it

Matt